In recent years, in the prior art much effort has been directed toward development of economically viable techniques for manufacturing various useful materials in the form of thin solid films which overlay a supporting solid substrate material, such as corrosion resistant materials, which provide chemical protection for the supporting material (e.g. an oxide coating on an aircraft engine's turbine blades). There are many differing technologies in use today, yet they can all be classified under one of the following five categories:
(1) Physical Vapor Deposition PA1 (2) Chemical Vapor Deposition PA1 (3) Electro--and Electroless Deposition PA1 (4) Thermal Spraying methods PA1 (5) Polymeric Coating methods
However, all these diverse methods involve the following three steps: (1) Synthesis of the depositing species; (2) Transport of the depositing species from its source or place of synthesis to the site of deposition; (3) Deposition and subsequent film growth.
It is recognized that in the prior art the same thin film material may be susceptible to formation by several different techniques. For example, thin films of amorphous hydrogenated silicon, which can be used in solar power conversion technology, may be fabricated by three radically different techniques: (1) Plasma deposition; (2) Sputtering and (3) Chemical Vapor Deposition (see e.g. M. H. Brodsky, "Plasma Preperation of Amorphous Silicon Films", Thin Solid Films 50, 1978 Elsevier Sequoia S. A., Lausanne--The Netherlands; T. D. Moustakas, et al, "Preparation of Highly Photoconductive Amorphous Silicon by RF Sputtering", Solid State Communications 23, 1977 Pergamon Press--Great Britain; S. C. Gau, et al, "Preperation of Amorphous Silicon Films by Chemical Vapor Deposition From Higher Silanes", Applied Physics Letters 39 (5), 1981 American Institute of Physics). Often an innovation in deposition technology manifests itself not as a direct improvement in the product material, but rather as an economic improvement in the process technique. It is to an improvement in the process that my inventions of both apparatus and method make possible, for with the use of simple flow systems, deposition of thin film materials are achieved, which previously required methods which employed complicated high vacuum apparatus. The result also makes possible synthesis and deposition of new structures of known chemical species.